Monday, 29 July 2013

Felicitation vs Real Ground Work?

Recently the biggest fan club in Nepal got together and conducted a felicitation program for the Nepal Cricketers. They were able to get some leading movie stars of Nepali cinema and got a good coverage in Media also. All the players were present along with the successful coach. The Fan Club was really happy in conducting the event.
The though that comes to my mind immediately is should this be the top priority for Nepali cricket or does it lies somewhere else. The Nepal team has been very successful in recent years winning Div 4, then ACC Trophy, Qualifying for World T20 Qualifier and Div 3(Though with hand of god in it), and many hope that they will make it to both 2014 World T20 as well as 2015 World Cup getting the ODI status. Since the time they have started winning they have been showered with the gift. This is where I see the south Asian mentality starting to kick in, not with honoring the players after all they are a talented bunch but with the issue of short term measures

Can Nepal afford to be bound by short term measures or thinking long term is the key?

At present the biggest worry for me is the youth that is on offer for Nepal. Many writer have earlier pointed out that this time Nepal U-19 came with the worst ever performance finishing 4th in the tournament losing to Afghanistan, UAE & Malaysia. At U-16 level Nepal also lost to Malaysia. It is the first time in many years that a player from U-19 team could not make it into the line up of the senior team. These are very serious issues. Nepal at junior levels was supposed to be unbeatable few years ago. Baring Afghanistan, where there is real passion for game any other youth team in Asia beating Nepal is a very serious issue. The pressure will be felt few years down the line when the Pipeline of players would finish

Nepal presently would have issue of resources and NCFC creditably has been able to garner resources from fans spread across the world. However the money collected should be spent judiciously on long term projects. I would go by a Chinese saying "Give a fish to hungry man and he eats today. Teach the hungry man how to fish and he eats for life". This summarizes the point of investing in long term.

This picture says a thousand words

The first thing that comes into my mind is various equipment that the present and future set of players would require. There are many training equipment or gym equipment that coach would have in his wishlist. Taking right people into loop such equipment would keep benefit players for many years. This is the place where Nepal team needs most support and a help here is the real help

Secondly the other area which needs big attention is the school cricket. I am sure that many students would be watching or playing cricket. A School Tournament in Kathmandu and some other bigger cities would help the upcoming players in these schools to showcase their talent. The best of the talent across the schools could then be given a chance in front of the coach. We all know that Nepal team is in big need of some good pacers. Talent identified here could have been trained for future for benefit of the team

Finally in future it would be beneficial to arrange to send many players across the world for advanced sports training. These players after being trained can pass some tips to other players and whole team gains from the experience.

I am not criticizing the Nepal Cricket Fan Club here, in my view they are the most genuine fans here who do many selfless acts for Nepali cricket. But as a genuine fan of Nepal & Associate Cricket it is my duty to criticize certain actions and guide it towards what according to me would be betterment of Cricket in the country.

Lets hope that we soon see Nepal team playing in the top cricket tournament and showing the huge potential it has in it. These certainly would be some of the most exciting times for Nepali cricket but we should not get carried away by it and keep an eye for future.